servant girl. The
girl did not like to leave Mr. Wesley alone in this great danger, and
begged him to get away and hide himself. But John Wesley was not one of
the "hiding" sort. Instead of that, as soon as they had succeeded in
bursting the door open, he just walked straight among the mob,
exclaiming: "Here I am! What have you got to say to me? To which of you
have I done any wrong?"

He made his way out into the street bare-headed, talking all the time;
and before he had finished, the ringleader of the mob declared no one
should touch him, he would be his protector. So he reached his lodgings
in safety.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXI.

Back in London.--Mr. John and Mr. Charles go
visiting.--Too much for one.--Talking matters
over.--The first Methodist Conference.--No time to
be in a hurry.--What early rising can do.--First
tract distributors.--A big district.--Boarding
schools 150 years ago.--Dreadful rules.

WE have been travelling all over England with Mr. Wesley, now I think we
must go back to London with him. The society there was still the largest
in the country: in the year I am writing about (1744), they had one
thousand nine hundred and fifty members. Mr. Wesley very much wished to
visit every one of these members, and asked his brother Charles to go
with him. They started their visiting at six o'clock every morning, and
did not leave off till six o'clock at night.

Six o'clock a.m. seems a funny time to call and see any one, does it
not? But you see people used to get up at four or five in the morning in
those days, and used to go to bed at eight, so it was not really such a
funny time as it seems.

Though Mr. John and Mr. Charles started so early and worked so late, it
took them a long, long time to visit all those 1950 members, and when
they had finished, Mr. Wesley realised for the first time how his work
had grown. He saw it was impossible, even with his brother's help, to
manage all the preachers and all the members scattered over the country,
when even the work in London was more than he could undertake alone. He
thought about this a great deal, and then he asked four clergymen and
four of his helpers, or what we should call local preachers, to meet him
and his brother at the Foundry, to talk things over and decide what
ought to be done. These gentlemen accepted his invitation, and there, on
that eventf